Hot on the heels of last week’s announcement that Snapchat users will now be able to add music to their snaps, the company’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, has said that he sees music as a “really interesting opportunity” for Snapchat

Hinting that the photo sharing platform may be adding more music-related features, Spiegel said “Music is really appealing to us right now because it has some of the same attributes that communication had when we were working on Snapchat in the beginning”

This week, Google announced the launch of YouTube Kids, an app designed and built with kids and parents in mind. The content on the platform will include educational videos, cartoons and music, and there will be regulations on who can upload content. The new app aims to prevent parents worrying about what kids might come across, as they would on the regular version of the video-sharing site. Parents will even have the option of enabling timers for their devices, so that kids know when it’s time to put the screens down.

#2 Pebble Smartwatch

This week, Pebble’s new smartwatch raised $1 million on Kickstarter in just over half an hour. At the time of writing, the campaign had more than 50,000 backers and raised almost $11 million. According to VentureBeat, the new smartwatch is “a $159 device with a handful of features brand new to the Pebble line, like: a colorful e-paper display; an updated, notification-centric OS; a ‘20 percent thinner’ design; and a Gorilla Glass screen.” Impressive!

#3 GDC 2015

The gaming community will converge on San Francisco next week as the city hosts the Game Developers Conference in the Moscone Convention Center. The event will host more than 400 lectures, panels and demos from across the gaming industry, all under one roof. Major brand names such as Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will be attending the event and showcasing the latest and greatest updates for their many games. We’re particularly fascinated to see how gaming companies plan to use virtual reality in the coming year.

#4 Gone to Texas

Move over San Francisco, it looks like Austin is taking a bigger bite of the tech pie. According to a new report by property consultants, Savills, San Francisco is ranked fifth for business environment; fourth on tech environment; second for quality of life; sixth for talent pool and eighth for property affordability. Among the 12 cities surveyed, Austin has one of the largest student populations, which means there’s always a rising pool of talented, tech-savvy youngsters for companies to recruit. The top five cities were: Austin, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, New York and Stockholm.

#5 reddit (finally) makes changes

After months of doing nothing about leaked images on the site, reddit is finally implementing some stringent digital privacy guidelines to prohibit posting sexually explicit images without a user’s consent. The updates come hot on the heels of the now infamous celebrity image leak, and the site now states that: “No matter who you are, if a photograph, video, or digital image of you in a state of nudity, sexual excitement, or engaged in any act of sexual conduct, is posted or linked to on reddit without your permission, it is prohibited on reddit.” The changes will go into effect on March 10th.

#6 Denny’s at the Oscars

The Oscars were held last weekend, and it was exciting to see all of the stars dressed to the nines representing their work over the past year. While not everyone walked away a winner, there were some brands that capitalized on the opportunity much better than others. One of our favorites has to be Denny’s! Not only does the company have a fun Tumblr, which we noted in a former onechocolate loves, but they know how to have a good time playing with their food to help engage users. Doesn’t it look tasty?

The complex nature of nurturing leads through the B2B sales pipeline means that, currently, a 5% conversion rate is considered a success. All major brands focus enormous efforts on targeting key prospects, drawing them into the sales funnel and nurturing them until they are ready to buy. Yet, crucially, 95% of website visitors leave without registering their details and when it comes to direct marketing to those that do, the average email open rate is just 20%.

And, to add to the frustration, most brands only achieve ongoing dialogue with just 5% of their prospects.

So, what are the key benefits for B2B brands?

LinkedIn’s Lead Accelerator aims to transform lead nurturing – ensuring marketers are no longer confined to the email inbox. It is designed to bridge the gap between social and lead-gen to make reaching, nurturing and converting higher volumes of the right prospects simpler and more effective.

The combination of LinkedIn and Bizo is certainly powerful. Prior to the acquisition, Bizo was creating 30 billion impressions per day and LinkedIn has over 300 million members worldwide. However, despite having over 50 million members in the UK, there are only 7-8 million active monthly users, limiting the potential reach of LinkedIn ads.

Now, LinkedIn ads will be displayed, not just on LinkedIn’s site and app, but across thousands of other websites across the internet. Thus, brands are no longer limited to targeting users only when they are logged in and are able to reach a whole new audience. Not only has the potential reach of posts increased massively, but thanks to LinkedIn’s vast database of users’ browsing behaviour, activity, seniority and industry, marketers can target tailored ads more accurately than ever before. By targeting the right people, with the right content, at the right time, marketers are able to directly reach the individuals who make buying decisions and hold the purse strings.

Recognising that more and more leads come via mobile, LinkedIn Lead Generator has improved functionality for mobile. For example, the smart data form auto-fill is designed to provide a better customer experience and substantially reduce drop-off rates, whilst increasing conversion rates. Prospects can register their LinkedIn details just by clicking one button.

LinkedIn Lead Accelerator provides analytics of campaign impact in real-time as well as comprehensive reports over set periods. This delivers insights into the funnel with a new degree of accuracy; who drops off and when, the exact stage of the funnel which individual prospects are at, and the conversion rate over a set period. Insights into the best performing ads, which prospects they are performing with and when, is provided through advanced A/B split testing.

onechocolate communications has successfully managed LinkedIn ad campaigns for leading B2B brands, targeting key prospects across international markets. To discover how we can help you get started – whether it’s a UK, international or global campaign – contact Emma Smith: emmas@onechocolatecomms.co.uk.

hitchBOT, the hugely popular robot who spent last summer hitchhiking across Canada and trying to make new friends, now wants to hitch a ride with us in Germany. The project was created to find out how willing the general public would be to help a robot they find on the street. The answer? A lot, at least in Canada. hitchBOT’s latest adventure in Germany is sponsored by local prime-time science TV show, Galileo. How well it works with skeptical Germans remains to be seen, but so far – one week into his trip – he seems to be settling in just fine. You can keep track of hitchBOT’s journey and the adventures he gets up to on his blog page.

#2 Planking challenge 2015

As many of us battle to beat the winter bulge, getting fit for spring is high on our agenda. This may well be the reason for the tremendous success of the Plank Challenge 2015 in Germany, which has got over 570k participants working on their planking skills, with many uploading their efforts on YouTube. The success of the challenge even surprised its creator, Daniel Malik, who only set up the event as a bit of fun for him and his friends before it went viral. The challenge is running till the 2nd of March, so get planking!

#3 Cupidrone

Whilst our British, French and American counterparts may have been loved up last weekend on Valentine’s Day, it was a different story for us. The romantic day is not popular in Germany, a statement backed up by research by German online travelling portal Opodo, which found that 70% of Germans do not care about Valentine’s Day and 40% are annoyed by the day. Despite our cynicism, one PR stunt by funnyhowflowersdothat.co.uk did catch our eye. In the promotional video from the Dutch flower brand, drones dropped roses at the feet of unexpecting couples in Verona – the setting for Romeo and Juliet. What we particularly love about this stunt is the spontaneous reactions from the participants and the juxtaposition of old romance and up-and-coming tech.

#4 The future of the kitchen

Those of us who aren’t blessed with culinary skills are particularly excited by Fissler’s latest announcement; that it is releasing a selection of IoT pots, pans and scales. By connecting via Bluetooth to a Smartphone or tablet, the user will receive information about the temperature and pressure of the pot or pan. The smart app will recognise a wide variety of recipes and the corresponding temperatures and the cooking times. The only downside is that – due to the batteries in the pan grip – it’s not dishwasher safe.

#5 Space-saving billboard

In last month’s onechocolate loves from Germany we talked about Astra’s tongue-in-cheek, womanising billboard. This week another smart billboard has caught our eye; it’s less high-tech but innovative nonetheless. IKEA has displayed three different slogans on one poster, printed in yellow, cyan and magenta and each one is only readable when illuminated by alternating red, green or blue light. We think this is a simple but brilliant way to promote IKEA’s message of making the most of small spaces.

#6 Haribo’s sweet succession

When one of Germany’s famous entertainers – and the face of Haribo – Thomas Gottschalk took his leave from the long-running entertainment program ‘Wetten, dass..?’ the replacement host could not live up to Gottschalk’s legacy and so the show ended last year. Consequently, Haribo knew the stakes were high in its search to find a new brand ambassador; Gottschalk had been tied with the sweet brand for 24 years and his ads were very popular. Haribo decided to make an official handover advert introducing Michael “Bully” Herbig, a well-known comedian. His fresh and quirky style has been very well received, so if you haven’t seen it yet, check out his funny dance of joy in the video above.

Twitter has announced that it is buying Niche – a company used by 6,000 social media influencers to manage their networks and develop relationships with advertisers

It is another indicator of the growing power of influencers, who marketers are increasingly investing in to promote their products and services

The move could see Twitter benefiting directly from the number of social influencers on its platform; up until now it has only seen a cut of the profits if an influencer decides to promote their tweets

Facebook is making a bid to compete with the likes of eBay and Craigslist by introducing new features to help users sell items on the social network

There are already millions of groups around the world that are used for selling items, but the new features aim to make this easier by giving group admins the ability to provide sellers with a form to fill in to ensure they give the right amount of information to sell the item. They will also be able to show when items have been sold, meaning buyers will only be able to see relevant products

Facebook has built a platform for the sharing of security threat information called ‘ThreatExchange’

Facebook has partnered with rivals such as Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr for the project

According to the social network, the need to share information become apparent following a “malware-based spam attack” just over a year ago; it will allow organisations to gain a bigger insight of potential threats and make their sites safer